Violence erupted on the Osmania University campus again on Monday morning with police resorting to lathicharge and lobbing of tear gas shells to quell agitated students who hurled stones on them.
Scores of students including at least five journalists covering the developments were injured in unbridled use of force by the policemen who appeared to have decided to selectively target the media persons.
Tear gas shells were being lobbed at the University College of Arts, the epicentre of the Telangana agitation and situation was very volatile.
The University campus saw a brutal backlash launched by the police on Sunday night in which 30 students, policemen and journalists were injured. The severity with which the police reacted to the developments on the campus attracted all round criticism and the Commissioner of Police, A.K. Khan had offered an unconditional apology to the media personnel who were injured in the lathicharges.
The Home Minister, P. Sabitha Indra Reddy who called on the injured in different hospitals too ordered a high-level inquiry into Sunday night incidents, but the police did not appear to be in a relenting mood, as they went berserk on Monday morning at slightest provocation.
The students were agitated over the refusal of legislators hailing from Telangana to resign from the Assembly.
On Monday morning, students gathered at Hostel ‘B’ which police stormed last night and beat up students. As the number of agitators swelled, police tried to disperse them and this launched another series of confrontations between police forces and students. As students replied with a hail of stones, police lathicharge several times and chased away the students.
Anti-maoist strategy on students:
Caught in the see-saw battles was the media. The Grey Hounds personnel, trained in jungle warfare to fight the Maoists, drafted for duty on the campus put to use the counterinsurgency tactic of making other uninvolved persons as shields. As stone-hurling intensified, the policemen in battle fatigues caught hold of a vernacular TV reporter who was going on a motorcycle and threatened the agitators that they would beat him up if stone pelting was not stopped.
With the agitators continuing to hurl stones, the policemen in full riot-gear thrashed the journalist mercilessly, despite he showing his identity card and pleading them with folded hands. The other journalists who were at a distance could reach the police only after sometime to save him.
Police drafted nearly two battalions of police force (over 2000 personnel) for security on the University campus which was sealed off. The police had put restrictions on movement of media and banned the entry of outdoor broadcast vans of TV channels into the campus already.
